A police investigation is under way into a fatal car crash that killed two girls aged seven and 10 and Ed Miliband will say Labour offers Britain hope in 2013 in a New Year’s message

A POLICE investigation is under way into a fatal car crash that killed two girls aged seven and 10.

The children died after the black Ford Focus they were travelling in crashed on the A47 near Wisbech, in Cambridgeshire, at 6.40pm yesterday, Norfolk Police said.

Both girls were taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, but later died from their injuries.

Labour offers UK hope - Miliband

ED Miliband today branded the coalition “a bad Government that is letting down the good people of this country”, in a New Year’s message promising that Labour will offer Britain hope in 2013.

Mr Miliband acknowledged that there were “no easy answers” to the country’s problems, but insisted: “I do believe that Britain can be better than it is. There can be hope for people again.”

He promised to flesh out his One Nation Labour slogan in the new year with concrete policies on business, education and welfare.

Man in court over Christmas murder

A MAN is due to appear in court today charged with the Christmas Day murder of a mother-of-three.

Charmaine Macmuiris was found dead at an address in Carmarthen on December 25 – prompting officers in West Wales to launch a major investigation.

Her parents said they had been left heartbroken by their daughter’s killing and would never be able to come to terms with their loss.

2012 set to be wettest on record

FORECASTERS have said 2012 is set to become the wettest on record in the UK after predicting a wet and windy end to the year as flood-battered areas were warned they face renewed danger from storms.

According to the Met office just 1.8in (46mm) of rain is needed to fall before December 31 to make this year the wettest on record for the UK overall, with a new record already set for England with 43.1in (1,095.8mm) falling between January 1 and Boxing Day.

The UK as a whole had 50.8in (1,291.2mm) of rain from January 1 to December 26, with the wettest year on record for the UK currently 2000, when 52.6in (1,337.3mm) fell.

Reagan’s Falklands plea to Thatcher

RONALD Reagan issued a last-ditch appeal to Margaret Thatcher to abandon her campaign to retake the Falklands and to hand over the islands to international peacekeepers, according to official documents made public today.

Files released by the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, under the 30-year rule show that as British troops closed in on final victory, the US president made a late-night phone call to Thatcher urging her not to completely humiliate the Argentines.

However, his request fell on deaf ears as a defiant prime minister insisted that she had not sent a British task force across the globe just “to hand over the Queen’s islands to a contact group”.

USSR ‘used civilian planes to spy’

THE Soviet Union used civil airliners to conduct secret Cold War spying missions over Britain, according to newly published Government files.

Some aircraft would switch off their transponders, alerting air traffic controllers to their position before veering off their approved flight paths to carry out aerial intelligence-gathering missions over sensitive targets, papers released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule show.

In a memorandum marked SECRET UK US EYES ONLY, Defence Secretary John Nott informed prime minister Margaret Thatcher in December 1981 that the RAF was monitoring the hundreds of monthly flights through UK airspace by Warsaw Pact airliners.

Letter shows Savile’s ’love’ for PM

JIMMY Savile declared his “love” for Margaret Thatcher in a hand-written letter after being invited to lunch with her, newly released records show.

But the star, then an OBE, claimed to have waited a week before writing to the prime minister to avoid appearing “too effusive”.

In what will now appear to be chilling references, Savile refers in the letter to the excitement of his “girl patients” and “paralyzed (sic) lads” at Stoke Mandeville Hospital following his lunch with Thatcher in 1980.

‘Campaign of fear’ urged for girls

MARGARET Thatcher was urged by one of her closest Cabinet allies to run a campaign of fear to deter teenage girls from becoming pregnant, according to newly published files.

Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph wanted the Government to produce a series of “scare” films in an attempt to curb the number of pregnancies among immature adolescents from “the least good homes”.

Joseph – regarded as Thatcher’s ideological mentor – believed a “sharply rising trend” of bad parenting was a “major cause of poor education and crime”, and he had no doubt who was responsible, according to official papers released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule.

Howe upbraided over long speech

MARGARET Thatcher upbraided Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe for his long-winded Budget speeches, according to official papers made public today.

Files released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule show the then prime minister told Sir Geoffrey that he needed to cut the detail in his 1982 Budget statement “by at least 1/3”.

“I have one overwhelming impression of this speech – it is so detailed that the general shape and purpose of the budget is lost,” she scrawled in the margin of Howe’s draft text.

Housing targets ‘cut by 270,000’

COUNCILS in England have cut their home-building targets by more than 270,000 since the abolition of regional planning in 2010, according to research by the Policy Exchange think tank.

The radical reductions could result in the lowest level of house-building since the 1920s, the think tank warned.

Regional Spatial Strategies were introduced in 2004 and set planning frameworks for all areas of England outside London. They were abolished by the coalition Government in 2010 in a move designed to give local authorities more power over planning.